A typical electronic display, such as an LCD, LED, or plasma display, shows a single image at a time to all viewable locations of the display. In an environment shared by multiple viewers, each viewer simultaneously sees the same image on the display. As a result, the image on the display cannot be simultaneously customized to multiple viewers of the display. Content is either selected to be suitable to all viewers, or customized to a subset of viewers at the expense of being less relevant to the remainder of viewers.
Multi-view displays, on the other hand, may comprise projection elements that can each controllably shine light of different color and brightness in many different directions. This allows multiple viewers in the same shared viewing environment to each see different content simultaneously on the same display. With such a display, content can be customized for each individual viewer, for display at the same time and on the same shared display.
The multi-view functionality, while allowing different experiences for different viewers or viewing zones, makes the display more challenging for a user to manage than a traditional single-view display, in which only a single image is displayed at any time.